The hardest part of the end of pregnancy is not so much the waiting, but the wondering. It feels like just about every day, I experience some kind of "Is this it?" feelings. The truth of the matter is, I wouldn't mind waiting awhile. I'd actually prefer it if this baby waited another week or so. But instead, I find myself unable to relax and just have fun and wait because I'm always in a state of pre-labor.
Monday evening, I felt very ill. Almost like a hangover, or the beginning of the flu. Nausea, headache, general body aches. By the evening, it had developed into contractions, but ones that I could distract myself from. That evening, I woke up with contractions several times, but by the time I woke up I mostly just felt sick again.
During the day on Tuesday, I expected throughout much of the day that I would go into labor. In fact, I never even left the house because I was so certain that labor was going to start at any moment. I was actually quite surprised when evening came and it hadn't developed into anything exciting.
Wednesday morning, I woke up with a headache and sore muscles but I forced myself to get up and install the car seat base while the weather was still cool. After that, I went for a long walk with Greta and we got some breakfast. On the walk back, I was getting very sore and crampy. I was actually kind of grateful that Greta wanted to push her stroller because it forced us to walk at a slow pace on the way home. Unfortunately, it didn't tire her out as much as it tired me out, and so Ben (who is sick with some kind of cold/sinus problem) and I had to struggle with getting her down for a nap before we could get some rest ourselves. (Thankfully, she did sleep and so did we!) That evening after she went to bed, I had really bad cramps and pulling sensations down in my lower abdomen and cervix. It was very unpleasant, but I managed to breathe through them and distracted myself with Netflix before falling asleep.
That brings us to last night. I woke up at 2am with INTENSE pain. It was like the worst period cramps of my life. Radiating all around my back and abdomen and down my legs (in particular, my right leg). It reminded me of when I woke up in labor with Greta -- just intense pain, with no discernible starting and stopping. I had told myself that this time, if something happened in the middle of the night, I would be better about letting Ben sleep as much as possible and deal with it on my own so that at least one of us could be well-rested. But I was in so much pain.
This sucks. Here I'd thought I was going to be so much better at handling contractions this time because I was going to get a break in-between them this time unlike with Greta. All of those "practice contractions" convinced me that I was going to have an easier labor and that I wouldn't have to deal with the overwhelming non-stop pain this time. And here I am, 2am and I'm waking up with non-stop pain just like last time. My body just doesn't know what early labor is supposed to be like. It's like it never read the manual.
I needed to heat up my heating pad and eat something so that I could take Tylenol, but I couldn't fathom making it down the stairs because I could barely stand up without the pain causing me to double over. I felt awful about waking up my sick husband, but I couldn't manage on my own. I woke Ben and he got the heating pad which helped tremendously. He made me a multigrain waffle and I ate it and took some Tylenol while he went back to sleep. I watched more Netflix until the pain faded enough that I could fall asleep again.
This is it. I know this feeling exactly. This is labor, or at least how my body "does" labor. I need to sleep now because I'm not going to get any more sleep for the next 28 hours (or maybe even more this time). Let's see if I can do it.
This morning when I woke up, I felt okay. Not great, but definitely nothing like what I'd experienced at 2am. I was afraid to move. When I'd move even just a little bit, I'd be hit by a cramp. I decided that, since my position was making a significant difference in how my cramps felt, it was probably not "real" labor. I forced myself to get out of bed, to eat some food, to drink some fluids, and to move around. With a little more time, I felt better.
And that brings me to now. Feeling utterly confused. What's it going to be like this time? Is it going to be a more "normal" process? Or was last night an indicator that it's going to be just like last time? Why did I have to go through that horrible pain if I wasn't going to have a baby today? Is my body just confused? On June 12 when I was convinced that I was in labor, the timing was indicative of active labor, but the intensity was not. This time, the intensity was there, but the timing was not.
I feel sore and the baby feels, perhaps, a bit lower. But other than that, I'm pretty sure nothing is going to come of last night's events. I'd really appreciate it if we could have a quiet and restful few days, followed by an actual labor and delivery. C'mon Piccola! You can do it!
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Sunday, June 21, 2015
10 Days!
10 days left until my due date. No promises that there will be a baby at that point, but it's nice to know I'll be in the single digits of the daily countdown soon. Feels a little like New Year's Eve.
Things are much more ready. Furniture is moved. The swing is set up. Hospital bags are packed. I need to install the car seat base, but I'm hoping to do that early in the morning when it's not so hot out. I'm having a hard time dealing with the heat. The A/C has been on all day, and I'm still fanning myself.
Greta is getting more excited. She understands that there's a baby in my belly, that the baby will come out and be her little sister, and that the baby is "cozy" in there. She has a small baby doll that was mine when I was a child and another one at her grandparents' house. Greta frequently makes noises akin to a gentle ambulance siren and then narrates that her baby is crying. Most of the time she then announces, "She needs a bottle," but today she began saying, "She needs her big sister. " YES, this freakin' melted my heart, and caused me to run inside to get the little doll so that Greta could hold her on our way to Menards.
There are many aspects of Greta's treatment of her baby doll that will be very different from her treatment of the actual live little sister that will be coming to live with us. For starters, Greta will not be able to hold the real baby in her lap while we are in the car. Also, when Greta tucks her baby doll into the swing, she frequently places a large toy car at the baby's feet and a bottle near the baby's face before asking me to turn the swing on. That will most definitely be changing when it's a real newborn in the swing. She does however, know that she has to step away from the swing while it is on, and that if she hears the noise that means it is on, she can't get close to it until Mama has turned it off and it has stopped moving on its own.
We are trying, in these small ways, to introduce Greta to some of the realities of life with a baby. Yesterday, when she asked me to give the baby a bottle (a little Medela pumping vial with a nipple on top), I explained that while Papa and other relatives and friends will use a bottle to feed the baby, most of the time Mama is going to nurse the baby. We chatted about what this meant for a few minutes and I didn't think she'd really internalized what it meant (it's hard for me to know for sure whether she remembers nursing . . . she says she does, but it was 9 months ago that she last nursed). A few hours later, she asked me to nurse the baby and then when I cradled the doll to my chest she announced, "She gets milk from the breast!" So she at least understands the concept.
With other things, however, there aren't as many easy opportunities for teachable moments. We don't have a pretend carseat, for example, and so for right now either the baby doll is going to be in Greta's arms during a car ride, or she'll be face down on the back seat (which often results in Greta stepping on her head as she climbs into her car seat). I suppose we could at least put the baby doll in a seatbelt, but I am not comfortable pretending that this 8-inch plush doll can 5-step before Greta can.
So those lessons will have to wait until there's an actual baby that will fit in an actual car seat. It will be interesting to see how the adjustment to a real baby goes. For the most part, Greta is pretty good at understanding what's pretend and what isn't. She puts her face all over the burners on her toy stove, for example, but when we demand that she stand clear of the big oven in the kitchen, she tends to listen. So will Greta try to pick up her baby sister by the neck or the hair? I kind of doubt that. I think she'll understand that real babies have to be treated more carefully.
And even if she doesn't right away, that is a lesson we will be working on very quickly!
Things are much more ready. Furniture is moved. The swing is set up. Hospital bags are packed. I need to install the car seat base, but I'm hoping to do that early in the morning when it's not so hot out. I'm having a hard time dealing with the heat. The A/C has been on all day, and I'm still fanning myself.
Greta is getting more excited. She understands that there's a baby in my belly, that the baby will come out and be her little sister, and that the baby is "cozy" in there. She has a small baby doll that was mine when I was a child and another one at her grandparents' house. Greta frequently makes noises akin to a gentle ambulance siren and then narrates that her baby is crying. Most of the time she then announces, "She needs a bottle," but today she began saying, "She needs her big sister. " YES, this freakin' melted my heart, and caused me to run inside to get the little doll so that Greta could hold her on our way to Menards.
There are many aspects of Greta's treatment of her baby doll that will be very different from her treatment of the actual live little sister that will be coming to live with us. For starters, Greta will not be able to hold the real baby in her lap while we are in the car. Also, when Greta tucks her baby doll into the swing, she frequently places a large toy car at the baby's feet and a bottle near the baby's face before asking me to turn the swing on. That will most definitely be changing when it's a real newborn in the swing. She does however, know that she has to step away from the swing while it is on, and that if she hears the noise that means it is on, she can't get close to it until Mama has turned it off and it has stopped moving on its own.
 |
| Greta's baby doll (which I named "Yellow Baby" as a child). |
We are trying, in these small ways, to introduce Greta to some of the realities of life with a baby. Yesterday, when she asked me to give the baby a bottle (a little Medela pumping vial with a nipple on top), I explained that while Papa and other relatives and friends will use a bottle to feed the baby, most of the time Mama is going to nurse the baby. We chatted about what this meant for a few minutes and I didn't think she'd really internalized what it meant (it's hard for me to know for sure whether she remembers nursing . . . she says she does, but it was 9 months ago that she last nursed). A few hours later, she asked me to nurse the baby and then when I cradled the doll to my chest she announced, "She gets milk from the breast!" So she at least understands the concept.
With other things, however, there aren't as many easy opportunities for teachable moments. We don't have a pretend carseat, for example, and so for right now either the baby doll is going to be in Greta's arms during a car ride, or she'll be face down on the back seat (which often results in Greta stepping on her head as she climbs into her car seat). I suppose we could at least put the baby doll in a seatbelt, but I am not comfortable pretending that this 8-inch plush doll can 5-step before Greta can.
So those lessons will have to wait until there's an actual baby that will fit in an actual car seat. It will be interesting to see how the adjustment to a real baby goes. For the most part, Greta is pretty good at understanding what's pretend and what isn't. She puts her face all over the burners on her toy stove, for example, but when we demand that she stand clear of the big oven in the kitchen, she tends to listen. So will Greta try to pick up her baby sister by the neck or the hair? I kind of doubt that. I think she'll understand that real babies have to be treated more carefully.
And even if she doesn't right away, that is a lesson we will be working on very quickly!
Monday, June 15, 2015
Who's feeling lucky?
The drama of our false labor reminded me that there was something else I needed to do, which is to start a baby pool. Feel free to add your guesses here:
Saturday, June 13, 2015
False Labor
I'm hoping that the title of this post makes it very clear that the events that I'm about to relay have not resulted in the birth of a baby. Just want to put that out there before you continue reading so that nobody gets too excited . . . Also, upon re-reading it, I think I should also take a moment now to reassure you, the reader, that the baby and I are fine.
On Friday morning, I woke up at 2:30am with some painful contractions. This isn't too unusual for me. I tried the usual tactics -- emptying my bladder, lying on my left side, drinking water, pooping, taking a shower, etc. Nothing was helping. I started timing them and they were fairly irregular -- most of them coming every 3-6 minutes, but a few were more like 6-9 minutes apart and some were as close as 2.5 minutes apart. Most of them were lasting about a minute. If they had felt more intense and been more regular, then the alarm of "5-1-1! 5 minutes or less apart! Lasting 1 minute! For one hour!" would have been going off in my head. But although they were painful and I had to stop and breathe to get through them, they just didn't feel like real labor to me.
Eventually, around 6am, I stopped timing them and decided to try to just get some rest. They were spacing out a bit by then, and so I figured this was my chance to see if I could sleep them off. I wrote a note to Ben to update him on what was going on and then got back in bed. I dozed a bit between contractions, but didn't really sleep much.
They weren't stopping. At 9am, Ben and I dropped Greta off at her drop-in daycare. As he went to take her inside, I gave her a kiss on the cheek and then, as I watched them walk off, I started crying, wondering if this was the last time I'd see her before she became a big sister.
We came back home and I sat on the yoga ball while Ben packed our bags for the hospital -- a task which we'd prepared for, but not yet actually accomplished (it had been on my to-do list for that day while Greta was at drop-in daycare). When we were done, I tried to distract myself for awhile and began to notice that the contractions were slowing to about 7-13 minutes apart. I felt fairly confident that things were chilling out.
By about 1pm, though, they were back to 2-5 minutes apart, and more intense. Ben arranged for his parents to pick up Greta from drop-in daycare and left for a nearby meeting. I called the midwife on call to check in and ask what she'd recommend. She asked whether my water had broken or if I'd had any bleeding. No. She asked what my GBS status was. Negative. She asked if I had been dilated at my last appointment and I sheepishly admitted that I had declined to be checked. She asked if I could talk through my contractions and, as I had one, I breathlessly said that I could, but that I didn't enjoy it. She said I sounded like I was in labor, warned me that second labors can be very different from first labors (I had protested that I hadn't had any bloody show or mucus plug loss), and reminded me that now might be a good time to come to the hospital because during the middle of the day we wouldn't have to worry about highway rush hour traffic. But my contractions still felt really manageable and lying down in my own bed was where I wanted to be. I said that I would try to stick it out at home for a little while longer and see what happened and she said that if I decided to come in, I should just call and have them page her that I was on my way rather than waiting for a call-back.
Ben and I chatted about it a few times. I now was convinced that this was the real deal. With each contraction, I could feel that my breathing was changing about 5 seconds before the actual contraction hit, it was rising to a peak that I could feel externally on my abdomen and that radiated down into my legs, and then gradually fading away after about a minute. Between Greta's pregnancy and this one, I had had plenty of contractions that didn't result in any cervical changes or baby births -- these ones felt legit.
But I still didn't want to be at the hospital yet. I wasn't panicked enough. I wasn't experiencing enough outward signs of labor. Heck, I was only 37 weeks -- the baby hadn't even dropped yet! It just didn't seem plausible that my baby was ready to be born.
This is the problem with having a first labor that has such a distinct starting point. With Greta, I had bloody mucus and almost immediately I was having time-able contractions. So when I couldn't sleep through them anymore and woke up in blinding pain, it felt reasonable to assume that I was in labor. This was so different. It felt like what I expect early labor to feel like, but the timing was more closely matched to active labor. I didn't want to be at the hospital if I was in early labor, but I didn't want to be at home if I was about to hit transition and give birth.
We operated off of instincts, which were telling us that this was the real deal, but that it might be awhile still and that we'd wait for things to get more intense before making the call to go to the hospital. The midwife called me back at 5:30pm towards the end of her on-call shift to check in and I asked whether I should keep trying to rest and lie down, or whether I should be up and moving around to get things progressing. She told me to do whatever felt best -- and that if I could rest, that was a good thing.
By around 8pm, things were slowing down again. The contractions were still coming about as frequently, but feeling even more manageable as far as intensity, and seemed to be shortening up to about 40 seconds instead of a minute in duration. I was feeling exhausted, so I took my usual half-tab of Unisom and tried going to sleep around 9pm.
In the night, I woke up and noticed that my contractions were gone. Completely gone. In fact, my uterus felt more relaxed than it had in months. I felt a flood of emotions -- relief that the pains had stopped; sadness that I wouldn't be meeting my baby soon; confusion as to what all that had been for! Having had so many contractions, it was eerie to not have any.
I woke again at 3:30 and went to use the restroom. Not a single contraction -- not even when I was sitting on the toilet (a position which often causes contractions for me during the third trimester). I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't and so I ended up going downstairs and eating a bowl of cereal.
As I sat at the dining table with my cereal, I shook my head, thinking how bizarre it felt to go from 60 to zero. To go to sleep with contractions 3 minutes apart and wake up with none. I rubbed my belly and thought about how calm my uterus felt. That I didn't even feel pregnant.
Then I froze. I didn't even feel pregnant. I realized that I hadn't felt a single movement from the baby since waking up, despite the fact that 3am-5am is usually a busy time for her. I started panicking and crying as I poured myself a tall glass of ice and apple juice and downed it. I lay down on my left side and turned on my kick count app. Within a couple minutes, I got two tiny movements, which was very relieving -- but they were tiny little flickers and not like her usual morning kicks. I started periodically poking my belly, shaking it this way and that. Lately, it has felt like every time I even lightly touched my belly, she'd roll around and move. Not now, though. Shaking my belly and poking and prodding did nothing. While I eventually got to 10 movements, it took awhile and I could barely stay awake to record the tenth movement. I fell back asleep, still a little worried.
When I woke again a few hours later, though, I still was feeling barely any movements. I was starting to panic. Only baby knows when she's ready, is a common phrase amongst childbirth experts. There is increasing evidence that there's something in the baby's brain -- rather than the mother's body -- which triggers the start of labor. Here my baby had been trying to get me into labor for 17 hours without success . . . and now she wasn't moving. Was something wrong? Was she in danger and needed to get out?
I called the midwife who was currently on-call and explained that my contractions had stopped, but that I now was worried about a decrease in fetal movement. She asked a few questions and then had me come in to be monitored.
The ride to the hospital was so long. Resting my hands on my motionless belly, I felt more scared than I ever have before. The hormonal drop from the previous day's excitement mixed with flashbacks to emptiness I felt on the day that we lost Sparkie. I found myself crying. I don't even feel pregnant. My own words kept ringing in my ears.
They hooked me up to the monitors at the hospital and began tracking the baby's heartbeat. The heartbeat wasn't all that reassuring -- after all, I knew that she had a heartbeat because I had felt a handful of movements. What worried me more was that she wasn't moving as much, and she wasn't responding to external stimuli (food, cold drinks, me poking at her) the way she normally did. I was worried that something was wrong and that she was in danger.
The midwife, nurse, and student midwife explained that the limited movements that I was feeling were correlated with excellent heart accelerations and that her heartbeat sounded "perfect." What's more, even when I couldn't feel the movement, they could tell that she was moving fairly frequently by the other sounds that the heartbeat monitor was picking up. I wanted to see her and see that everything was okay, but they don't send you for an ultrasound when they can confirm that everything's okay with the other monitors. So after some more anxious crying and the reassurance of a few more kicks-associated-with-accelerations, we headed out.
For what it's worth, she's been moving more normally since then. Things are looking good for both of us. I'm a complete emotional mess, but that's just par for the course with me.
The take-home message? False labor is insane. It is a total head trip. I had heard of it, of course. I knew it was possible to have contractions that really do feel just like real labor without being in labor. I had heard of people arriving at the hospital, only to be sent home. But after my experience with Greta -- in which I had had plenty of contractions, but felt distinctly different when it was "the real thing" -- I had thought for sure that I would know the difference. Now I don't know what to think. Yesterday I felt progressively more convinced that there was no turning back, that no matter how long it took, I was on my way to having a baby. Today, I have no fecking clue. Is labor going to pick up again in a couple days? In a couple weeks? Will I go overdue?
Although I had intended to decline pre-labor cervical checks unless I went overdue, I am now wondering whether I should get myself checked out at my next appointment -- if only to satisfy my curiosity and to make it easier to answer the, "And what were the results of your most recent cervical check?" question by midwives and nurses. As much as I know that it's my right to decide whether to get checked, I felt bad for not having an answer to a routine question.
On the other hand, if I am still not dilated at all, I will feel angry at my body for not knowing how to properly dilate a cervix. I will feel like my 17 hours of "labor" are all for nought.
Except that we got those bags packed. That is definitely worth something.
On Friday morning, I woke up at 2:30am with some painful contractions. This isn't too unusual for me. I tried the usual tactics -- emptying my bladder, lying on my left side, drinking water, pooping, taking a shower, etc. Nothing was helping. I started timing them and they were fairly irregular -- most of them coming every 3-6 minutes, but a few were more like 6-9 minutes apart and some were as close as 2.5 minutes apart. Most of them were lasting about a minute. If they had felt more intense and been more regular, then the alarm of "5-1-1! 5 minutes or less apart! Lasting 1 minute! For one hour!" would have been going off in my head. But although they were painful and I had to stop and breathe to get through them, they just didn't feel like real labor to me.
Eventually, around 6am, I stopped timing them and decided to try to just get some rest. They were spacing out a bit by then, and so I figured this was my chance to see if I could sleep them off. I wrote a note to Ben to update him on what was going on and then got back in bed. I dozed a bit between contractions, but didn't really sleep much.
They weren't stopping. At 9am, Ben and I dropped Greta off at her drop-in daycare. As he went to take her inside, I gave her a kiss on the cheek and then, as I watched them walk off, I started crying, wondering if this was the last time I'd see her before she became a big sister.
We came back home and I sat on the yoga ball while Ben packed our bags for the hospital -- a task which we'd prepared for, but not yet actually accomplished (it had been on my to-do list for that day while Greta was at drop-in daycare). When we were done, I tried to distract myself for awhile and began to notice that the contractions were slowing to about 7-13 minutes apart. I felt fairly confident that things were chilling out.
By about 1pm, though, they were back to 2-5 minutes apart, and more intense. Ben arranged for his parents to pick up Greta from drop-in daycare and left for a nearby meeting. I called the midwife on call to check in and ask what she'd recommend. She asked whether my water had broken or if I'd had any bleeding. No. She asked what my GBS status was. Negative. She asked if I had been dilated at my last appointment and I sheepishly admitted that I had declined to be checked. She asked if I could talk through my contractions and, as I had one, I breathlessly said that I could, but that I didn't enjoy it. She said I sounded like I was in labor, warned me that second labors can be very different from first labors (I had protested that I hadn't had any bloody show or mucus plug loss), and reminded me that now might be a good time to come to the hospital because during the middle of the day we wouldn't have to worry about highway rush hour traffic. But my contractions still felt really manageable and lying down in my own bed was where I wanted to be. I said that I would try to stick it out at home for a little while longer and see what happened and she said that if I decided to come in, I should just call and have them page her that I was on my way rather than waiting for a call-back.
Ben and I chatted about it a few times. I now was convinced that this was the real deal. With each contraction, I could feel that my breathing was changing about 5 seconds before the actual contraction hit, it was rising to a peak that I could feel externally on my abdomen and that radiated down into my legs, and then gradually fading away after about a minute. Between Greta's pregnancy and this one, I had had plenty of contractions that didn't result in any cervical changes or baby births -- these ones felt legit.
But I still didn't want to be at the hospital yet. I wasn't panicked enough. I wasn't experiencing enough outward signs of labor. Heck, I was only 37 weeks -- the baby hadn't even dropped yet! It just didn't seem plausible that my baby was ready to be born.
This is the problem with having a first labor that has such a distinct starting point. With Greta, I had bloody mucus and almost immediately I was having time-able contractions. So when I couldn't sleep through them anymore and woke up in blinding pain, it felt reasonable to assume that I was in labor. This was so different. It felt like what I expect early labor to feel like, but the timing was more closely matched to active labor. I didn't want to be at the hospital if I was in early labor, but I didn't want to be at home if I was about to hit transition and give birth.
We operated off of instincts, which were telling us that this was the real deal, but that it might be awhile still and that we'd wait for things to get more intense before making the call to go to the hospital. The midwife called me back at 5:30pm towards the end of her on-call shift to check in and I asked whether I should keep trying to rest and lie down, or whether I should be up and moving around to get things progressing. She told me to do whatever felt best -- and that if I could rest, that was a good thing.
By around 8pm, things were slowing down again. The contractions were still coming about as frequently, but feeling even more manageable as far as intensity, and seemed to be shortening up to about 40 seconds instead of a minute in duration. I was feeling exhausted, so I took my usual half-tab of Unisom and tried going to sleep around 9pm.
In the night, I woke up and noticed that my contractions were gone. Completely gone. In fact, my uterus felt more relaxed than it had in months. I felt a flood of emotions -- relief that the pains had stopped; sadness that I wouldn't be meeting my baby soon; confusion as to what all that had been for! Having had so many contractions, it was eerie to not have any.
I woke again at 3:30 and went to use the restroom. Not a single contraction -- not even when I was sitting on the toilet (a position which often causes contractions for me during the third trimester). I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't and so I ended up going downstairs and eating a bowl of cereal.
As I sat at the dining table with my cereal, I shook my head, thinking how bizarre it felt to go from 60 to zero. To go to sleep with contractions 3 minutes apart and wake up with none. I rubbed my belly and thought about how calm my uterus felt. That I didn't even feel pregnant.
Then I froze. I didn't even feel pregnant. I realized that I hadn't felt a single movement from the baby since waking up, despite the fact that 3am-5am is usually a busy time for her. I started panicking and crying as I poured myself a tall glass of ice and apple juice and downed it. I lay down on my left side and turned on my kick count app. Within a couple minutes, I got two tiny movements, which was very relieving -- but they were tiny little flickers and not like her usual morning kicks. I started periodically poking my belly, shaking it this way and that. Lately, it has felt like every time I even lightly touched my belly, she'd roll around and move. Not now, though. Shaking my belly and poking and prodding did nothing. While I eventually got to 10 movements, it took awhile and I could barely stay awake to record the tenth movement. I fell back asleep, still a little worried.
When I woke again a few hours later, though, I still was feeling barely any movements. I was starting to panic. Only baby knows when she's ready, is a common phrase amongst childbirth experts. There is increasing evidence that there's something in the baby's brain -- rather than the mother's body -- which triggers the start of labor. Here my baby had been trying to get me into labor for 17 hours without success . . . and now she wasn't moving. Was something wrong? Was she in danger and needed to get out?
I called the midwife who was currently on-call and explained that my contractions had stopped, but that I now was worried about a decrease in fetal movement. She asked a few questions and then had me come in to be monitored.
The ride to the hospital was so long. Resting my hands on my motionless belly, I felt more scared than I ever have before. The hormonal drop from the previous day's excitement mixed with flashbacks to emptiness I felt on the day that we lost Sparkie. I found myself crying. I don't even feel pregnant. My own words kept ringing in my ears.
They hooked me up to the monitors at the hospital and began tracking the baby's heartbeat. The heartbeat wasn't all that reassuring -- after all, I knew that she had a heartbeat because I had felt a handful of movements. What worried me more was that she wasn't moving as much, and she wasn't responding to external stimuli (food, cold drinks, me poking at her) the way she normally did. I was worried that something was wrong and that she was in danger.
The midwife, nurse, and student midwife explained that the limited movements that I was feeling were correlated with excellent heart accelerations and that her heartbeat sounded "perfect." What's more, even when I couldn't feel the movement, they could tell that she was moving fairly frequently by the other sounds that the heartbeat monitor was picking up. I wanted to see her and see that everything was okay, but they don't send you for an ultrasound when they can confirm that everything's okay with the other monitors. So after some more anxious crying and the reassurance of a few more kicks-associated-with-accelerations, we headed out.
For what it's worth, she's been moving more normally since then. Things are looking good for both of us. I'm a complete emotional mess, but that's just par for the course with me.
The take-home message? False labor is insane. It is a total head trip. I had heard of it, of course. I knew it was possible to have contractions that really do feel just like real labor without being in labor. I had heard of people arriving at the hospital, only to be sent home. But after my experience with Greta -- in which I had had plenty of contractions, but felt distinctly different when it was "the real thing" -- I had thought for sure that I would know the difference. Now I don't know what to think. Yesterday I felt progressively more convinced that there was no turning back, that no matter how long it took, I was on my way to having a baby. Today, I have no fecking clue. Is labor going to pick up again in a couple days? In a couple weeks? Will I go overdue?
Although I had intended to decline pre-labor cervical checks unless I went overdue, I am now wondering whether I should get myself checked out at my next appointment -- if only to satisfy my curiosity and to make it easier to answer the, "And what were the results of your most recent cervical check?" question by midwives and nurses. As much as I know that it's my right to decide whether to get checked, I felt bad for not having an answer to a routine question.
On the other hand, if I am still not dilated at all, I will feel angry at my body for not knowing how to properly dilate a cervix. I will feel like my 17 hours of "labor" are all for nought.
Except that we got those bags packed. That is definitely worth something.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Baby Names
We've been playing the "Should we name the baby _______?" game with Greta. So far, she's offered her approval ("Yeah!") of several lovely and normal names, as well as some unusual choices such as Truck, Cookie, and Stalin. We've decided that we shouldn't rely on her guidance for naming this baby.
Interestingly, despite her general approval of virtually any name or word that we suggest, when asked directly, "What should we name the baby?" she has steadfastly replied with only one suggestion: Pie.
Or is it π?
With our first two pregnancies, my due date was within 2 days of March 14 (Pi Day). Greta was due March 16, but born March 18. The baby boy that we lost would have been due March 12. In both cases, my initial excitement over discovering that I was pregnant involved mentally marking my due date and noting its proximity to Pi Day. I hoped and hoped that I would be lucky enough to have a "Pi Baby."
So imagine my surprise when Greta announced that the baby should be named Pi. We don't eat a lot of pie in our household. She's familiar with the word from books, of course, but there are many words that she is much more familiar with -- like "milk" or "puppy." Why she has decided that the baby should be named Pi(e) has mystified us. Perhaps she has a distant memory of me expressing my hopes that Sparkie would be a "Pi Baby" -- but if that's the reason, the would be remembering comments from last summer.
For awhile, when she would suggest Pi(e), she would laugh like it was our inside joke. She then began to chuckle and say, "Pi(e)!" even when we were laughing about something else -- as if to say, "It's fun to laugh -- remember when we laughed and laughed about the word Pi(e), Mama?"
Now, though, she takes it so seriously and almost seems confused as to why we haven't simply taken her at her word. The other day when I asked for her name recommendations, she didn't miss a beat -- "Pi(e)," she said, as though she was puzzled by my lack of memory.
I am starting to wonder whether Greta is going to call the baby Pi(e), no matter what. It might be a cute nickname for her to give the baby. A funny story about how I finally got my Pi Baby.
Interestingly, despite her general approval of virtually any name or word that we suggest, when asked directly, "What should we name the baby?" she has steadfastly replied with only one suggestion: Pie.
Or is it π?
With our first two pregnancies, my due date was within 2 days of March 14 (Pi Day). Greta was due March 16, but born March 18. The baby boy that we lost would have been due March 12. In both cases, my initial excitement over discovering that I was pregnant involved mentally marking my due date and noting its proximity to Pi Day. I hoped and hoped that I would be lucky enough to have a "Pi Baby."
So imagine my surprise when Greta announced that the baby should be named Pi. We don't eat a lot of pie in our household. She's familiar with the word from books, of course, but there are many words that she is much more familiar with -- like "milk" or "puppy." Why she has decided that the baby should be named Pi(e) has mystified us. Perhaps she has a distant memory of me expressing my hopes that Sparkie would be a "Pi Baby" -- but if that's the reason, the would be remembering comments from last summer.
For awhile, when she would suggest Pi(e), she would laugh like it was our inside joke. She then began to chuckle and say, "Pi(e)!" even when we were laughing about something else -- as if to say, "It's fun to laugh -- remember when we laughed and laughed about the word Pi(e), Mama?"
Now, though, she takes it so seriously and almost seems confused as to why we haven't simply taken her at her word. The other day when I asked for her name recommendations, she didn't miss a beat -- "Pi(e)," she said, as though she was puzzled by my lack of memory.
I am starting to wonder whether Greta is going to call the baby Pi(e), no matter what. It might be a cute nickname for her to give the baby. A funny story about how I finally got my Pi Baby.
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